fascinating thread. person makes a remarkable, and thoughtful, suggestion about a possible future for Puppy. In fact, I believe it should be required reading for any developer involved. Thread wanders around from useful, to old venom, to perceived insult... is almost derailed, yet stays on the tracks and all the input remains worth reading. The forum in a nutshell.

I think that somewhere between the visions of mikeslr and amigo lies a successful long-term future of puppy. Should Puppy exist as a reflection of the larger world of linux distributions, or maintain a separate repository? Or can both ideas be merged into a third more resilient base from which Puppy can move forward?

For me as a user, and that's all I am, the worrying thing is simply what will puppy 5.5 or 6.0 be, and will it be able to speak, in any real way, to the data (or the savefile) I have in 5.2. Should I be betting, right now, on spup, or upup, or dpup? What dog should I have in the fight? Is there really a fight?

You were lucky, mikeslr, to pull playdayz into the thread. From my reading of the forum, he seems to have the best handle on woof of any person outside BK, and I think he may have the best mental roadmap of a future for Puppy along the lines you mention. Whether he has the time, or the inclination, to suffer the slings and arrow required to realize that path is another matter entirely.

ADDED: Arch is quite interesting. At first glance, as a poster mentioned, their wiki and website are full of information and...well...quite focused. Arch lays out, right up front, both what it is, and more importantly, what it is not. It seems that Arch is lead by a team leader, assisted by a team. They know what Arch will look like in a month, and in five years. Regarding package management, one developer on the team, had this to say "... I run ArchLinux since 0.4 and since then i never had to reinstall the OS on this laptop. Besides no need to reinstall it, i have always the latest versions of software i need." taken from here: http://www.osnews.com/story/10142

All that said, I remain a Puppy lover. It is an remarkable and singular achievement. It is elastic and useful. Like all acolytes, I have moments of doubt. For example, just this week, I see two other efforts on this forum to create new, additional wikis about Puppy rather than working on the existing effort. Just another example of enlightened design-by-chaos? Or an indicator that Puppy, like Bilbo, sometimes becomes like butter, spread over too much bread?

ADDED: as always, simply my worthless dos centavos. I thank everyone on the thread for some great food for thought._________________"you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go.." - Cormac McCarthy - No Country For Old Men.

Rest assured that I remain a loyal Puppy devotee. But from time to time I wonder what others are doing.
IMHO, it seems Ubuntu has somehow fallen under a spell, repeating to itself "bloat is good, bloat is good" until it was believed. Which raises the question "If woof is to be of value, woof what?"
There, of course, remains debian which many, myself included, believed was the best distro for Puppy commensalism. But, as I still like Arch Linux's ability to perform a live upgrade of both its core (operating system) and applications, I just checked.
Seems someone named Calimero has developed a new live version. The thread begins @ https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=107798&p=1, with more documentation @ http://ctkarch.org/documentation/0.7/.

Perhaps someone who understands both woof and Linux in general will find it useful.

I got to mulling around, found link on an Archlinux blog back to this thread and decided to re-read it. Something I should have done before posting. But maybe not.
In re-reading, this time I took notice of Jemimah's mention of Amigo's src2pkg, and Amigo's post @http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=64337. src2pkg --hadn't realized it existed, probably because I've never tried to compile anything.
But what a great idea. And I'll add that I think Amigo has presented a strong argument why Puppy should not be concentrating on retro-fitting other distros' apps.
Unless I've misunderstood, what src2pkg does --or facilities-- is the creating of a package from source via scripts; sometimes no "human intervention" is needed, but frequently the "script" will provide a modifiable framework that makes package creation easier than starting "from scratch."
Part of the idea behind Woof was to lessen the need for storage and bandwidth. Surely, a script applicable to the source maintained elsewhere requires less of both than the finished app. And I've seen, fairly frequently, where someone engaged in compiling has asked for assistance.
So, how about a repository of scripts? And a forum thread to discuss what modifications to each may be necessary when something fundamental, like a new kernel, requires changes. On second thought, a repository may not always be necessary, as the script could be attached as a compressed file to a post.
If the foregoing makes any sense, perhaps someone who understands compiling might suggest it to the appropriate forum moderators.

mikesLr

p.s., will someone please email me instructions regarding how to link to a post rather than just the webpage of the thread its on. ('')

Cool that you did test CTK ARch. I wish I knew how to boot that one in frugal install on NTFS. Maybe it need to be on a USB. But what grub2 bootcode does it need?

Sorry for derailing your thread. Arch seems tempting but as always. Puppy devs are in it for the fun of it so if they have not make an Arch version yet then something with arch are not enough fun for them._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

I don't expect that Puppy will be on the top for long. It is too different.

I think we all should be happy over that we are so high up. Compare to other os with small iso like Slitaz and TinyCore. Them are way lower and them are no bad linux set ups at all._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

p.s., will someone please email me instructions regarding how to link to a post rather than just the webpage of the thread its on. ('')

Did anyone?
You just need to right-click, "Copy link location" or similar, on the white page icon at the top left of the post._________________Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Sorry to be so late to the party, and I think I might be one of the forum members mentioned in the first post working on a Woof-Arch build. Short story: I decided to drop the effort. To answer one of the questions, I don't believe Arch is a good canidate for a Woof build. What I was finding is that the Woof scripts required a lot of modification to accomodate Arch, mainly because Arch changed the compression scheme for their packages after Woof was written. There were also a couple of other structural items in the format of the repository database files that required modification of the Woof scripts. I think I had gotten around those problems however (or at least the ones I'd found).

Barry of course keeps updating Woof, which then required me to continually merge my changes in the scripts into his updated scripts. The other thing I found is that some package names changed from what they were originally called. Last reason I dropped it is that I really don't know BASH all that well and it was very slow going through all of the scripts and support files trying to find and fix problems.

For those reasons I decided to actually install Arch on my computer, and I found I really love it. Whoever said "learing curve" was correct, but once you are there it is a great system.

One thing I'd like to add to the first post is the comment about upgrading Arch. The simple pacman command given will indeed update all installed packages on your system. Sometimes however that is not the end of the story. Some upgrades will install new config files which then have to be merged into your existing files, and this step has to be done manually, file by file. Once you know how it is not difficult, but I'm not sure it could be automated.

Anyway I've now moved over to trying and create an Arch system that can boot from USB and save and load user files like a Puppy. If I actually get anywhere (don't anyone hold your breath) I'll post the results here.

Some upgrades will install new config files which then have to be merged into your existing files, and this step has to be done manually, file by file. Once you know how it is not difficult

What do you mean, "once you know how"? Is there somewhere that tells you "how"? Does it somehow avoid overwriting the old config files, so you actually still have them to merge with the new ones?_________________Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

For example, if you already have the configuration file /etc/someconfig.conf, and the package wants to install a new one, the new one will be installed as /etc/someconfig.conf.pacnew. It will then tell you that it was installed as such. It is up to you to compare them and figure out what you want to do about it.

It's usually pretty easy to deal with. The new config files will usually just have a new option or a renamed option or trivial stuff like that. So the process is normally to just update your copy accordingly, or else add your desired settings to the new (vanilla) version and move it over the old one.

I like to use "vimdiff" for that, personally._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

What about making that Arch thing of yours truly Puppy like in that it can boot on NTFS internal HDD in frugal install

Your question touches on something I've been pondering: what is it that makes Puppy a Puppy, or for that matter what makes any distro what it is. In my own mind I've come to the conslusion that it really boils down to the startup scripts, and to a lesser extent the shutdown scripts. Seems to me everything in between can be found in some form or another in any distribution.

If it is the startup and shutdown scripts that define a distro then I doubt what I'm working on will be a true Puppy. I'm planning to use as much of the Arch stuff as possible since the kernel, xorg, scripts and all the other things come from their repos and are built to operate together. My Woof attempts with the kernel from Lucid, packages from Arch, and a few PETs from T2 were, not surprisingly, a disaster in that nothing wanted to play with anything else.

A frual install is something I would work towards (mainly because I'd use it), but it will be down the road a bit. I don't think that where I'm trying to go will be a true Puppy, more like a FrankenPup.

Pizzasgood - thanks for answering that question for me. I use Meld for the diffs, probably very similar to vimdiff I expect.

I found what this guy did rather cool. I've tested to boot at least three
Arch variations and his was the only that actually booted frugally.

Archiso-live 20110104 Release « Godane's Development Blog
godane.wordpress.com/.../archiso-live-201101...
Be the first to like this post. ~ by godane on January 5, 2011. Posted in archiso-live, release. 10 Responses to “Archiso-live 20110104 Release”. Thank you! ...

But him gave up on Arch when his computer hdd crached and he had no money to buy a new one them gave him an old laptop but that one had not enough memory so he is into Slitaz now instead making it arch modular something

title chakra ( is an arch too but does not boot at all frugally?)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /chakra/boot/vmlinuz26 from=/dev/sda3/archiso rw elevator=deadline session=xfce
initrd /chakra/boot/larch.img_________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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